10 Potty Training Mistakes You Don’t Want to Make (I Made Them All)
Updated July 5, 2024, after potty training my second son (more mistakes were made).
I laid my sleeping newborn down and left the room to a quiet house. Usually, a quiet house would be a good thing, but I had two panicked thoughts: Where was my toddler, and what was he doing?
I took each stair slowly, dreading what I might find.
As I turned the corner, I stopped, wishing I could go right back up the stairs.
Instead, I watched as he crouched down on the floor, attempting to wipe up a brown mess that was smeared all over the floor and his little potty. As I walked into the bathroom, I found the rest of the disaster as I put the pieces together.
He’d tried to dump his own waste and instead dumped it everywhere along the way to the toilet.
I have to admit that potty training has been my least favorite task as a mom. There’s something about disasters that end with poop in places it should never be that leaves me wishing I could outsource this parenting task.
Unfortunately, there’s no way around it. Whether you’ve started potty training and have found yourself stuck with no answers or you’re gearing up for the task ahead, I’ve learned a lot about what you shouldn’t do. I hope you’ll learn from my mistakes and avoid your own potty-training disasters.
10 Potty Training Mistakes You Don’t Want to Make
Mistake #1: Not Coming Prepared
Learn about potty training long before you start. Read about different methods, watch videos, and talk to every toddler mom you know. The wrong time to learn about potty training is in the middle of potty training after you start potty training.
When I started potty training my son, I read Making the “Terrible” Twos Terrific* by John Rosemond, which devotes a few chapters to potty training and I was ready to go. A few days in my son had naked potty training down, but every time I put pants on him, he forgot how to use the potty. Nowhere in this book or in his other book, Toliet Training Without Tantrums, does Rosemond explain how to move from naked to dressed.
I later read Oh Crap Potty Training by Jamie Glowacki, which outlines a similar process as Rosemond’s in detailed steps. Explaining how to move through each stage. Having all of this information before I started would have made things a lot less confusing for me and my son.
You don’t have to have all the answers. You’ll always have questions as things come up, but at least have a step-by-step game plan and a few different resources before you start.
The Bottom Line: Learn everything about potty training before you start.
Mistake #2: Learning From Only One Person
There are tons of different views on potty training. Don’t choose one without knowing them all. Here are the main ones I’ve found to get you started.
Popular Potty Training Methods
- The Naked and Gradual Method (John Rosemond, Jamie Glowacki)
- Starts early (18-24 months)
- Starts with naked potty training
- Parent-initiated training (no signs of readiness),
- Child-led
- Parent makes potty training no big deal
- No songs, books, rewards, or celebrations
- No diapers or pull-ups
- The Quick Fix Method (Potty Training in 3 Days: The Step-by-Step Plan for a Clean Break from Dirty Diapers by Brandi Brucks and other similar books)
- Potty training is completed quickly
- Starts naked and pushes child through stages each day
- Celebrations
- Parent-initiated, but watches for signs of readiness
- Parent-led
- The parent constantly asks “do you need to use the potty?” and reinforces “pee-pee goes in the potty”
- No diapers or pull-ups
- The Laid Back Method (Janet Lansbury, Lisa Sunbury, & Dr. Steve Hodges)
- Child-initiated training
- Emphasizes readiness
- Diapers until the child is not having accidents
- No timeline
- Requires parents to place no interest or agenda around potty training
- Suggests “no training” that children will use the potty in their own time
Read each book or article and decide which method you will use. Don’t read one book (like I did) and blindly follow one person’s advice. Learn about every method you can. Gather every bit of information before you attempt to guide your child through this transition.
The Bottom Line: Gather all of the information you can and make an informed decision about which method you’ll use before you start.
Mistake #3: Buying All the Things
Like most things with kids, there are tons of items you can buy for potty training. And a lot are pushed as must-haves.
I recommend three items:
When I started potty training my son, I bought a little potty, a step-up seat, a toilet seat cover, a travel toilet seat, a car seat cover, timers, and a travel potty. Oh, and a bunch of different kinds of underwear. Most of this stuff was unnecessary and didn’t get reused with my second son.
After potty training two boys, I recommend starting with a little potty and transitioning to pull-ups at night. Even if you don’t use the little potty during the day, it’s perfect for nighttime training later.
If you have trouble with potty training, I highly recommend a potty training watch. Both of my boys seemed fully potty trained after 4-6 weeks but suffered massive regressions soon after. I’ve learned this is a boy thing.
They’d forget to go potty, and my reminders turned into a power struggle. The watch gave my son ownership of the whole process and saved us a lot of negative interactions.
The Bottom Line: You don’t need a ton of products to teach your child to learn to use the potty.
Mistake #4: Starting During a Transition
At seven months pregnant, I decided to potty train my 19-month-old.
Based on what I’d read, it would take no more than a month to complete. It’d be the perfect timing.
As I’m sure you can guess by now, I was wrong.
Kids are more perceptive than we realize. My son knew something was changing. On top of that, he’d just started daycare for the first time. And I was back to work full-time. Those were a lot of transitions that he was facing all at the same time. And I added potty training to the mix. 🙄
I’m sure you can guess that attempt was a disaster.
A few months later, I tried to potty train him again. Right before we put our house up for sale and moved. 🙈🙉🙊 Another unsuccessful attempt.
It ended up taking me over a year to daytime potty train him.
Are you in your third trimester? Are you moving? Are you going back to work? Is your childcare situation changing? If you answered yes to any of these questions, now is not the time to potty train.
I know it’s hard because you really don’t want two kids in diapers, and something is constantly changing. But learn from my mistake and wait for a month of stability.
The Bottom Line: Don’t potty train through a transition.
Mistake #5: Letting Your Anxiety Reign
If you are anxious about potty training, your child will be anxious about potty training. This is a problem that two of the three methods I shared above note. Your anxiety is the enemy of potty training.
Anxiety can cause your child to respond in a way that hinders potty training. They can become resistant to potty training (read more about that in “Toliet Troubles“). There are even cases where potty training has caused children to hold their BMs, creating severe medical problems (read more in “A Doctor Responds: Don’t Potty Train Your Baby“).
You can fend off anxiety by realizing that your child will learn eventually and by learning more about potty training methods. I found Janet Lansbury’s podcasts about potty training to be helpful in easing my anxiety about potty training.
And even with all my potty training struggles and mistakes, today my firstborn is 4 years old and fully potty trained (day and night).
The Bottom Line: Do everything you can to ease your anxiety about potty training.
Mistake #6: Starting Too Early (or too late)
Worrying about the timing can be a catalyst for potty training disasters. If you start too young, your toddler can’t do many of the tasks needed to make potty training successful—like telling you he needs to go, pulling his pants up and down, or not dumping his fecal matter all over the floor while you’re putting the baby to sleep.
On the other hand, some suggest that starting too late can make children more resistant and less self-reliant.
Personally, I think the worst time to start is when you feel anxious about a time. If you rush to potty training because you hear the best time is 18 months, 36 months, or before your child has to wear diapers to kindergarten, you’re going to be more anxious.
Find a time that works for both of you. I started at 2.5 with my second son and quickly recognized that could have done it sooner. My suspicion is between 2 and 2.5 is the right time, but every child is different.
The Bottom Line: Don’t put a time stamp on potty training.
Mistake #7: Setting An End Date
Similar to the last mistake, don’t set a specific end date. This puts extra pressure on you and your child. And of course, this extra pressure causes anxiety around the topic. The closer you get to that date, the more frustrated you will feel if your child isn’t there.
Instead, let your child take the reigns. He or she is potty training, not you. The more you push the issue, the more resistant your child will become.
If you expect and accept that it will take time for your child to master this new skill, it can go a long way towards helping your child to ‘go with the flow,’ so to speak.
Lisa Sunbury
From my experience, the more I pushed my son, the more stressed I became and the more resistant he was. Any time there was any negativity or pressure around the topic, accidents increased. (This was solved by using the potty watch with my 2nd son.)
The Bottom Line: Don’t set an end date for potty training.
Mistake #8: Being Pushy About Potty Training
Once all of the transitions had calmed down, I decided there was no excuse anymore. It was time for my son to be potty trained. He knew how to do it, but he just didn’t want to, so I pushed.
Guess how that worked out.
Not only were there more accidents, but he started holding his poop until he had a pull-up on at naptime. He would then remove his pull-up. Who wants to wear a pull-up with poop in it? And get poop all over his room while he changed his pants and tried to figure out what to do with the dirty pull-up. I’d walk into a room with poop all over the floor, his toys, and in various other places that poop should never be.
The Bottom Line: Don’t push the issue. If you get resistance, back off and wait until your child is ready to try again.
Mistake #9: Writing Off Certain Methods
Parenting can be controversial. Potty training is no different. There’s never just one proper method.
Most of the methods I listed above are against reward charts. However, When I talked to my son’s pediatrician, that was her recommendation. Since I’d tried everything else, I figured, why not?
In the end, that was what worked for my firstborn son. After all of the negativity, it brought some positivity to the topic. It only took about a week of reward stickers before he was intrinsically motivated to do things on his own. (I used this reward chart.)
The Bottom Line: Don’t write off specific methods as bad. It might be the method that works for your child.
Mistake #10: Thinking Someone Else Knows Your Child Better Than You
My firstborn son has always been a fast learner and a slow implementer. With every new skill, he learns quickly but sets it aside until he’s mastered it.
In the end, I tried every method of potty training, and he was always going to do it on his own time. If I’d simply given him the skills and trusted him to work it out in time, I’m confident he would have.
My mistake with him was following the advice to push the issue with toddlers. How much more confident would my son be in his own skills if I let him take the lead?
For my second son, I let the advice of letting him initiate cause me to miss that he was ready months before I tried. With his personality, he’s often capable but happy to continue to be babied.
There are tons of potty training books, articles, and videos out there, not to mention all the unsolicited advice you’ll get. But remember that these people don’t know your child. You do.
I don’t care if someone has completed a case study on hundreds of different children. Their advice is based on the average response, not all the different unique possibilities that are children.
The Bottom Line: Trust what you know about your child and tailor potty training to them.
I hope this article empowers you to confidently tackle potty training at the right time. If nothing else, remember that potty training with a newborn could bring on a lot of poop disasters. Save it for a low-stress time, let your child initiate, and learn everything you possibly can before approaching the potty training years.
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